Ex-prosecutor purposefully misrepresents rulings of ICC Ocampo’s murky past experiences

Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (ICC), has recently made headlines with his absurd claims. The prejudicial, anti-Azerbaijani reports demonstrates that either the author lacks sufficient knowledge of international law or that there are other motivations at play.

Before delving into the specifics, it is important to note that the economic region of Karabakh is recognised by international law as Azerbaijani territory, and the separatist authority there acts in defiance of this law.

In his absurd report, Ocampo warned that Azerbaijan is preparing “genocide” against ethnic Armenians in its Karabakh region calling for the UN Security Council to bring the matter before the international tribunal.

In turn, the Azerbaijani government dismissed Ocampo’s report, saying it “contains unsubstantiated allegations and accusations”. “It is biased and distorts the real situation on the ground and represents serious factual, legal and substantive errors,” Hikmat Hajiyev, an assistant to Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev, told The Associated Press, on August 9.

It is crucial to look into Ocampo's professional background and shed light on his illicit relationships with corrupt people in order to comprehend the motivations for his biased report.

Ocampo’s criminal engagements

Ocampo, 65, before becoming the first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2003 and holding that position for nine years, he established his reputation by bringing cases against former members of Argentina’s military regime.

A dispute over the former prosecutor at the International Criminal Court's lucrative advising work for a Libyan businessman with deep links to Muammar Gaddafi's government put him in the spotlight.

After 40,000 papers, including emails, information on offshore investments, and other correspondence, were leaked, it was discovered that Luis Moreno Ocampo had business ties with Hassan Tatanaki, who was associated with a Libyan militia suspected of extrajudicial murders and other rights crimes.

Hassan Tatanaki

Tatanaki, a well-known figure in Libya, was connected to Seif al-Islam Gaddafi, the former leader's son. Additionally, he has been connected to General Khalifa Haftar, the military leader of Libya whose troops have been implicated in arbitrary murders and other human rights abuses.

The documents, which were acquired by the French investigative website Mediapart and shared with a collection of news outlets known as the European Investigative Collaboration, also claim that Moreno Ocampo's former colleagues at the ICC engaged in questionable business dealings with him after he left the organization to work as a private consultant.

In order to assist him promote his "Justice First" program, which aims to "bring peace to Libya," wealthy Libyan oil mogul and owner of TV media Hassan Tatanaki employs Ocampo on a three-year deal worth a million dollars annually plus a day pay of 5,000 dollars in 2015.

On a Tatanaki-owned TV station, one of General Haftar's lieutenants allegedly threatened to murder anyone who refused to join his army. Later, Moreno Ocamo came up with a plan to "isolate" his client from the militia while highlighting Tatanaki's efforts to promote peace and reconciliation.

Khalifa Belqasim Hafta

As evidenced by the leaked documents, Ocampo took advantage of the chance to make money even while pretending to be charitable by setting up a press conference on the Yazidis for a charge of $8,000. Since Ocampo is not accustomed to doing a "favour" for nothing, this specific illustration suggests that the most recent report on Karabakh Armenians by the former chief prosecutor also implies similar motivations.

The name Ocampo also surfaced in controversies and court cases in the Commonwealth of Independent States when, in his capacity as a witness, he defended Vladislav Reznik against charges of money laundering through Centros Commerciales Antei.

Ocampo was found in the Panama Papers to have two Panamanian offshores and one in the British Virgin Islands. The ICC said in 2017 that it was investigating Ocampo for conflicts of interest, in particular in the case of the Libyan oil tycoon, when Ocampo acted “against the interests of the ICC.”

Former prosecutor’s Offshore Companies

According to the statutes of the ICC the chief prosecutor, a position Argentine lawyer Moreno Ocampo held from 2003 to 2012, must be a person of “high moral character”. Moreover, it states: “Neither the Prosecutor nor a Deputy Prosecutor shall engage in any activity which is likely to interfere with his or her prosecutorial functions or to affect confidence in his or her independence. They shall not engage in any other occupation of a professional nature.”

Ocampo managed companies based in some of the most notorious tax havens in the world while serving as chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, documents obtained by Mediapart and analysed by the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) reveal.

On August 15, 2012, $50,000 was deposited to Ocampo's account at the Dutch bank ABN Amro, two months after he left his position as top prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Tain Bay Corporation, a company headquartered in Panama, transferred a minimum of $140,000 in multiple installments through Switzerland to an account in the Netherlands.

Ocampo and his wife were the real owners of the Tain Bay Corporation in Panama, according to documents obtained by the French investigative website Mediapart and examined by journalists with the European Investigative Collaboration (EIC) network. He appeared to desire to surreptitiously move his assets when his high-profile career as head prosecutor of the ICC came to an end.

Ocampo dissolved Tain Bay in Panama in February 2015. His Crédit Agricole banker urged him to think about doing business with the institution again in the future. In response, Ocampo said he intended to "try to make some more millions" before returning.

Tain Bay wasn't Ocampo's only offshore company. According to the records, Ocampo had ties to a business in the British Virgin Islands. Evidently, Lucia Enterprises in Belize was run by his wife. Transparent Markets, a business registered in Uruguay, a nation regarded as a tax haven in South America, is the business he most recently held.

The records show that Ocampo placed a high value on maintaining the secrecy of his offshore businesses since Panama, Belize, and the British Virgin Islands (BVI) are ideal locations for tax avoidance and the concealment of financial activities.

Even more unexpectedly, Ocampo worked for offshore businesses while in office. The top prosecutor and his wife were listed as shareholders of the fictitious BVI-registered business Yemana Trading in the paperwork. The corporation was run by the legal firm Mossack Fonseca, whose offshore ventures were made public by the "Panama Papers."

The aforementioned facts lead to the reasonable assumption that someone with such murky past experiences is purposefully misrepresenting the rulings of the International Court of Justice and the actual state of affairs on the Lachin Road and in its vicinity, for the sake of his own financial benefits.

The impetus for creating such a paper was likely Ocampo's relatively long and intimate association with Armenia and the Karabakh criminals, whose hands are stained with the blood of thousands of Azerbaijanis.